"Comrade, you're sitting in my seat. Mind moving aside?"
In the aisle, a slender, fair-skinned young woman wearing a beige *bulagi* dress stood there, frowning as she looked at the young woman sitting in the seat opposite her.
The one occupying the seat had a narrow face, prominent cheekbones, a mean-looking appearance, and wore shabby clothes.
Glaring at the girl in the beige *bulagi* with undisguised jealousy, she said, "What yours or mine? We're all educated youths going down to the countryside; we should help each other out. I'm not feeling well, so I want to sit by the window."
The girl in the *bulagi* was not someone to be easily dismissed. "Your voice is loud, your breathing is steady, and you're in perfectly good health without a trace of illness."
"I... are you the one who decides whether I'm sick or not?"
The *bulagi* said with absolute certainty, "You simply aren't sick."
The woman with prominent cheekbones resorted to shamelessness. "Well, I'm not getting up, anyway. What can you possibly do to me?"
The *bulagi* glanced at her, said nothing, turned around, and walked away.
Thinking she had won, the woman with prominent cheekbones looked immensely pleased with herself.
A few minutes later, however, the *bulagi* returned with a train conductor in uniform, pointed at the woman, and said, "Comrade Conductor, she's occupying my seat."
The conductor stepped forward with a serious expression. "Comrade, occupying someone else's seat is wrong. Please return the seat to this comrade."
Being the type to bully the weak and fear the strong, the woman with prominent cheekbones had no choice but to get up reluctantly and give up the seat.
Once the seat was cleared, the *bulagi* put down her small backpack and walked further inside.
By now the conductor had already left. With a defiant look in her eyes, the woman directly reached out and shoved the *bulagi*.
"Watch out!"
Quick as lightning, Song Zhishu stood up and caught the *bulagi*'s head just as it was about to crash against the carriage wall, shielding her from the impact.
The *bulagi* looked up. Their eyes met, and they pulled apart as if struck by an electric shock.
After stepping back, the *bulagi* turned to glare at the woman with prominent cheekbones and shoved her right back.
The woman stumbled and fell onto the opposite bench, beginning to wail, "Why are you hitting people?"
"I won't attack unless I'm attacked. Pull another stunt like that, and I'll hit you back."
With the *bulagi*'s fierce gaze fixed on her, the woman was too frightened to make another sound.
Since her seat was also on this side, she carefully squeezed onto the very edge, not daring to get close again.
Seeing that the woman had finally behaved herself, the *bulagi* turned to Song Zhishu and politely offered her thanks. "Thank you for helping me just now. My name is Gu Qingya, an educated youth heading down to the countryside in Heisheng Province."
"Song Zhishu. I'm also an educated youth heading to Heisheng Province."
*Ding-dong!*
[Host has triggered a task: Splash water on Gu Qingya.]
Fu Yurou: ?_?
Ever since the System tried persuading people to go to the countryside, it had started issuing brain-dead tasks.
Fu Yurou: "I don't want to do this task."
System: "Host, failure to complete the task will result in the confiscation of your storage space access rights. Please consider carefully."
Fu Yurou: "If you keep threatening to take back my space like this, see if I don't just slack off and refuse to do any more tasks."
"Host, you're about to arrive in the countryside, and you haven't prepared any food for the journey. If the System Mall doesn't open, you might face starvation. Are you really not going to do this task?"
Fu Yurou's expression shifted.
She had originally planned to stop by a state-run restaurant on her way to the railway station to buy food for the road, but first she had found the savings passbook and letter in Fu Aiguo's room, and then she had been busy withdrawing the money.
She had missed mealtime entirely; forget buying food, she hadn't even eaten lunch.
This train ride was going to last three days and two nights—was she supposed to starve the whole time?
"It's just splashing some water, no big deal."
Still, she wasn't reconciled to being constantly threatened by the System, and even suspected the whole thing was calculated.
Otherwise, why would the sum of three tasks leave her exactly one thousand points short of unlocking the System Mall? It had to be deliberate.
"But from now on, you can't just threaten to revoke my storage space access whenever you feel like it."
System: "Host, the space is only on loan to you for now. If you want permanent ownership, you must work hard to complete tasks and redeem it with points so it belongs to you completely."
"Isn't this supposed to be my transmigrator perk? I actually have to spend points to buy it?"
System: "Loaning it to you for temporary use *is* the perk."
Fu Yurou was so angry she almost puffed up like a pufferfish. What a scam of a system!
With no other choice—for the sake of the money and treasures in the space, and to avoid starving—she would just have to splash her.
"Comrade Song, your hand is bleeding."
Suddenly, Gu Qingya's expression shifted. Coming back to her senses, Fu Yurou looked over and saw, sure enough, a scratch on the back of Song Zhishu's hand, oozing a bit of blood.
Looking up again, she noticed a small, rusty stub of a nail protruding from the carriage wall.
If Gu Qingya's head had swung back against that earlier, the consequences would have been severe.
"Just a small scratch, it's nothing." Song Zhishu glanced at it and pulled his hand back.
"No way, that nail is rusted—you could get tetanus. You have to treat it properly."
Glaring fiercely at the woman with prominent cheekbones, Gu Qingya took a small medicine bottle and a roll of gauze from her backpack.
"I have a doctor in my family, so I know how to treat these kinds of wounds. Comrade Song, you can rest assured."
Seeing this, Song Zhishu had no choice but to extend his hand again. "Then I'll have to trouble Comrade Gu."
"Don't mention it. When it comes down to it, I'm the one who should be thanking you."
Gu Qingya then began treating Song Zhishu's wound with a serious expression. First, she used tweezers to pull an alcohol cotton ball out of a plain plastic bottle with no labels to disinfect the area, then she applied a nameless round tube of ointment onto the back of his hand.
Finally, she carefully wrapped it up with gauze.
Fu Yurou hadn't paid much attention before, but the longer she watched, the more wrong everything looked.
There was something deeply off about Gu Qingya from head to toe.
She didn't seem to have any luggage at all, save for the double-strap backpack on her shoulders. While it was made of the standard blue homespun cloth of the era, it had a multitude of pockets and a remarkably fashionable design, looking straight out of modern times.
The skin on her face was so fair and flawless that not a single pore was visible—wasn't that a modern no-makeup makeup look?
And her hair—instead of the usual limp, flat braids, it had a fluffy, lazy aesthetic.
Even her fingernails were clean, rounded, and glossy. She was wearing clear nail polish!
Could it be... could she have run into a fellow time traveler?
"System, System, come out right now."
"Host, what is it?"
"Is Gu Qingya a transmigrator?"
"Yes, Host. Just like you, Gu Qingya transmigrated from modern times, and she brought a supermarket with her."
"What? Other people transmigrate with a whole supermarket, while I transmigrate with nothing, and even a tiny space is just temporary? What use are you to me?"
Jealousy threatened to tear her apart at the cellular level.
"Host, it's not the same. Gu Qingya's supermarket doesn't have a system and cannot open the System Mall, whereas I am an artificial intelligence capable of assisting you in surviving this world."
"You haven't assisted me for shit! You haven't done a single thing except issue tasks. She comes with her own supermarket and doesn't even have to do tasks—how about you let me trade places with her?"
System: "The trade cannot be executed. Please complete the task as soon as possible, Host."
Tasks, tasks, always tasks.
Reluctantly, Fu Yurou pulled her water canteen from her personal satchel, thankful that there was still water inside.
She unscrewed the cap, took a sip, and prepared to set it down on the small table between the two rows of seats. Pretending to lose her grip, she tilted the mouth of the bottle directly toward Gu Qingya and poured.